This week in Alcohol-Infused Gratuitous MechanicalNon-Reporductive Intercourse for Entertainment, we get ever so close to a new build with even more levels from the team. Dan, Ichiro, and Ryan have been iterating on a bunch of new levels and Titans, which should result in a build next week. Take a look at these sexy screenshots. Whadya think? If you missed last week's blog post, check that out to see some of the work that led up to this.

Make your own damn levels!

Yeah, what she said! Learn how to make you own arenas in this video featuring "Protips and advanced arena/level design" from Ryan. The video was recorded during our weekly twitch show. You can catch us at 2pm EST every Tuesday.

Today's show is brought to you…

…by the letters D, R, and P, and the numbers 6 and 8. Dan has been busy churning out arena descriptions and crafting voiceover scripts for Ichiro to record. Here are some of my favorites. No pictures here, just pure verbal joy…

DOWN TOWN

More pipes than Down Below, fewer people. Down Town is a drainage area. Grates line the walls, spewing things out and allowing those things to escape. Most of those things are liquids, or semisolids suspended in liquids. There's a ceiling high overhead and the arena as a whole is narrow, so when a string of drones emerges from the top it can chase the player down to the bottom–but it's easy for the player to blast a path back to the top. Shelves, or ledges, line the walls, wide enough for Reuben to perch on them but not to run around and dodge; they are also too small, and too far apart vertically, to provide any cover from above. Maybe a little from below. Down Below echoes with the sounds of pumps and circulating fluids.

The Titan here has weapons oriented on top and on the bottom, none to the sides, and doesn't shoot anything with homing properties. It lets the drones do the sweeping while it waits for a chance to hit Reuben directly.

Reuben: That wasn't so bad, was it?Reuben: I said, THAT wasn't so bad, was it?Suit: Who are you talking to?

GREATRIUM ROOVES

(Did he say rooves?) The top of the Greatrium Mall. A round area, the glassed-in roof of the actual circular Atrium, is surrounded by raised sections, like long low buildings radiating away from the circle like the rays of a sunburst. The ceiling of this Arena is low, made of 10-meter-thick smoked glassteel, and above it is an ARTIFICIAL SUN. Vaguely visible through the barrier are dark objects orbiting the fake sun, but that won't be relevant until the Player goes to the next Arena. Meanwhile, down here, the Titan is low and flattened, following a path that takes it over each raised roof "spoke." Powerups are at the tips of the "spokes," and Drones generate in the middle, including dangerous swarms of Spitfires. At the exact center of the map, in the center of the atrium roof, is a raised circular platform- the special access hatch of the central elevator inside the structure below–but the Player cannot get into it. (Though if we add "exit spaces" that would be a good one). The drones all spawn around this hatch, not on top of it, so the Player can stand on top of it and have drones rising from all directions while the distant Titan shoots missile after missile. Good times.

We interrupt this program with the arts

Here's some of Jon's early hero art for Reuben Matsumoto, the game's protagonist:

Here are mockups of the game world map…

…and the end-of-round screen…

…and a new HUD concept!

And with that, we leave you longing for next week's show. Bye for now!

This week the DRP team has been busy working on a ton of new content. This blog post will show you some of Jon's art and some of Ryan's new levels which Elliot and Ichiro are using to develop the gameplay. Here's everyone at our offices in Cambridge MA. You can expect the new content to get to you in the next week or so…

Ryan – AKA the man who worked with us on Aaaaa!, Awesome, and the earliest version of DRP:

Jonathan:

Ichiro and Elliot:

Let's start with some new art from Jonathan:

These are skybokes; they make up the background of the levels and set the mood. Jon is still developing these. The buildings and structures that you see are actually baked into the background so that we can get some depth without any computational cost.

Here are some level "skeletons" from Ryan:

The idea with a level skeleton is for one level designer to build an initial level, and then bounce this back and forth with the other level designer(s) while gradually add layers…blood, veins, arteries, meat, skin, and hair till it is one sexy beast of a level. Ryan makes really sexy skeletons!

Next up, Ichiro and Ryan will iterate on levels and get some into a new Early Access build. You will also start to see more of a narrative unfold.

Before there was Ugly Baby, Ugly Baby was Kick It. We'd like to share 25 images from the original with the question: How do we make this stuff fit into our current Ugly Baby aesthetic? The Answer? Well see for yourself with a collection of our newer art. Its probably also worth noting that the original was built on the bones of Aaaaa! so you may notice some art-i-facts… see what I did there

Did you know that Ugly Baby was a techno opera about the coming Technological Singularity? Here are the draft lyrics to an upcoming track that talks about one of the Seven Modern Sins: Hyperconnectedness:

Someone shouts across the globe.
Wireless tellin' me across my home.
Talk to you in the next room?Traceroute's: me, space, then your phone.

We've been "heads down" working on Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby. Ichiro's been designing levels in Python, and has been working on two of his favorite things: narrative and audio. Let's take a look at a new track that he has been working on called "Future Shock":

Future shock is society's boon.
It might not kill us, just turn life around.
When am I s'posed to silence my phone?
Trust a robot surgeon of world-renown?

How many petabytes is enough?
How augmented do I want my reality?
In a world where we are merging our minds,
How do we approach the Singularity?

Ichiro's also been working on "Chitter" chirps, which are basically sound bites that the game's main character speaks during the game. Here's an example of one, and here's what that looks like when he's editing it together in Adobe Audition:

Future Shock takes place around February, 2032, when Azumi Pentak decides to take up base jumping. She is the main Protagonist we talked about briefly in a previous blog post.

Azumi was born on August 25th, 2006 in Providential Hospital, Boston Sky. She is the child of Azumi Asahi and Gertrude Pentak, and had a younger brother, Samuel Pentak, who died from a falling accident. She's into robotics, and has a PhD in Machine Intelligence from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Whenever she jumps, she has her oculars morph what she sees into this stuff:

It's these jumps her fans watch for. They're illegal, dangerous, and a lot of fun.

This week was B-U-S-Y! We brought the Ugly Baby team in, shackled them to their chairs, and asked everyone to crunch. The goal was to launch our next amazing build, but we wanted to give it another week to bake it to perfection. Here is how the week went… in pictures and video, 'cause words are lame-o.

We streamed level creation and art creation on Twitch for several hours each day. Grab a sack of popcorn and check these out:

Concept Art From Jonathan:

Jon streamed the creation of some of these:

3D Models from Amy:

The top left one started out as the "Swiss Cheese" piece and evolved to be a Hot Pocket. You can see Jon's concept sketch above. To Quote Amy: its the "The sexiest parking garage modeled after food!"

Level Screenshots Featuring The WHOLE Team's Blood and Pixels:

Next week: Catch us for another episode of "We will make this game awesome if it's the last thing we do."

Recipe:

These are not essential, but may save you some mouse clicks and your Carpal Tunnel (don't ever say we don't care about you). Note, we do plan to update the UI before launch.

Step 2: Building a Titan base

Loosely, a Titan consists of a core surrounded by structural pieces, weapons, and decorations. To completely eliminate a Titan, you have to destroy its core, but you first have to pick off its extremities to get there. When you're designing one, your goal is to make that as challenging (and as fun!) as possible. First, pick a core (shown above) based on your vision for the Titan. Experiment away, and check out the Steam Workshop for inspiration based on what other people are doing.

Step 3: Add to the base

Select a mount point on the core and hit "A" to see available pieces (you can also click on the button at the top of the "Mounts" tab, but keyboard shortcuts are faster). Set a piece's health (you'll see the option when you select a piece and click on the "Pieces" button — protip: you can shift-select multiple pieces). A Titan's extremities will be easier to destroy than the inner ones — that is, until you destroy the extremities.

Hear Amy and Elliot describe how this works:

Step 4: Arming your Titan

Weapons are part of the piece they're attached to (the "parent" piece), and can’t be destroyed individually, though they do contribute to how difficult it is to destroy the parent.

If you're using weapon and shield banks (see below), we generally advise that you have the Titan stop firing while shields are up. From a gameplay standpoint, shields work best when an arena is built around their presence — if a Titan's shielded for 10 seconds, make sure there are things strewn about for the player to collect during that period. More on this in the videos on Arena building.

Watch Elliot talk about weapons:

Step 5: Giving Your Titan Personality

When making complex, sexy, Titans, use multiple pieces (and types of pieces). More pieces = more explosions!

Think outside the pieces: just because it's called "shoulder" doesn't mean it has to be a shoulder, nor does a "leg" only work as a leg – English is soooo one-dimensional.

Some of the smallest pieces are the most versatile — spine, X-fork, joint, etc.

Steam discussions boards replaced the last bit with hearts so I am guesing what Noth typed, but here is the original update notice:

May 9th, 2013 — Ugly Baby Update — Waffles!

Are you hungry? Amy apparently wants you to be. What’s that, you say? Staying away from the carbs? Well, hopefully this update is just as delicious.

GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE: Michael went all crazy with the UI! Brand spanking new graphics to tickle your eyes. He’s a perfectionist, so he says he’s not done yet. How do you think it’s coming along? What can you figure out from it? What doesn’t make sense?

GAMEPLAY: A new stunt has joined buzzes and grooves, because they were getting lonely. Meet the NEEDLE! Can you figure out how to do it? Gameplay has changed slightly, so listen closely. Get near anything to buzz an object. Orient the world to your stomach (bottom of the screen), to groove. If you hit things, you damage your sensor. If your sensor’s damaged, you can’t do stunts! As your sensor detects stuff, you build up a score multiplier, so keep doing stunts!

VISUALIZER: Dave’s research continues to pay off. Play level one with some fast/heavy music. Dubstep, Rock, Death Metal, EDM. That’s all I’m sayin’.

We’d like to personally call out, the progress bar feature in this recent update was due in part to a user suggesting it. I’m an awful person and can’t remember who did originally, so if it was you, thank you, keep ‘em coming!

As always, tell us what you love, what you hate, and where you think Michael’s running off to next week. He won’t tell us.

Concept Art!

It's been a while since we talked concept art for Ugly Baby, so let me break it all down.

Azumi Pentak is Ugly Baby's protagonist, and you'll get to know her in time. Ichiro and Jon are still working on her look and backstory. Check out some of Jon's illustrations:

Architecture:

We're also exploring city architecture. Jon drew inspiration from several different places (including overhead maps of landing strips) to come up with these shapes that may result in new architecture:

Building Paintovers:

Paintovers are a great way to explore new artistic directions before creating the 3D assets. As the name suggests, Jon grabbed some screenshots from the game and "painted" over them. What do you think?

The final step is to take the above and create an actual in-game test shot based on the above, as Amy did here:

Another busy week of Drunken Robot Pornography means that we are a week closer to launch! In this blog post, we talk about some new art that Amy and Jon have been working on, but first, let's recap our latest Twitch stream:

#1DO THIS NOW: Go check out our Twitch channel and follow us to catch next week's stream live. It happens on Tuesdays at 2pm EDT/ GMT -4, and all episodes get recorded.

#2 This week's highlight videos are made from the live stream. They are a nice way to see what's most interesting to you. Evetually they will end up on Youtube:

Survival mode — watch Jon play some. Think you can kick his butt? Prove it with your own videos!

Bulding Titans parts 2a and 2b with Amy on keyboards and mouse. We show some player-generated Titans and talk about the fine art of working with color and animation.

Building arenas part 1 is about building arenas…yup. The Arena builder is where you can design the physical level, place drone spawners, and also place multiple Titans for a crazy futuristic Collosseum experience. Do you hate your friends? Show them how much!

ART!

Two weeks ago, we showed you a bunch of new art, including Titans, arcology maps, and some UI work from Jon. This week, Jon joined us on Twitch and talked about all the art below. You can watch the highlight videos in part 1 and part 2.

First up, check out these gorgeous backgrounds (AKA skyboxes) that Jon has been working on. They remind me of blazing hot summer days growing up in Dubai, where the sun was so hot you could literally fry an egg.

Many of today's sports arenas have roofs to keep out rain, or nets to keep errant balls from landing in the seats; here we see a compoent that we could use as a giant net or dome:

Here are some mock-ups of the HUD. I particularly like the 3rd image below, which shows the broken visor, probably from an errant bullet – yikes!

Jon is also working on some really crazy guns – check out these concepts and watch him talk about them in the stream above.

Amy has been pretty busy working on "Drop That Beat Like An Ugly Baby," but here are some buldings that she textured for use in building DRP levels: